---
title: Without so much as sitting down, the dragon-king fled. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: Without so much as sitting down, the dragon-king fled. Who acts: dragon king. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 11, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 11, sentence 123

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Without so much as sitting down, the dragon-king fled.

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**Who acts:** dragon king · **What happens:** sit down, flee

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dragon king), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg74064:11:131
# text = Without so much as sitting down, the dragon-king fled.
1	Without	without	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	so	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	obl	_	_
4	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
5	sitting	sit	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	3	advcl	_	_
6	down	down	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	dragon	dragon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	fled	flee	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit down** | gerund | the dragon king *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **flee** | past | the dragon king |  |  |  |  | without much | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Project Gutenberg book 74064 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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